


Titanium

by AroAceArrowAce



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Asexual Clint Barton, Deaf Clint Barton, M/M, Non-Graphic Suicide Attempt, Pining, Slow Burn, Winterhawk Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-12 00:39:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5647576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AroAceArrowAce/pseuds/AroAceArrowAce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint's never been good at dealing with people, so when Captain America's dead best friend starts hanging around him, he's not sure what he's going to do.</p><p>But he knows he'll need some more coffee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Titanium

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fox (Spacefoxen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spacefoxen/gifts).



Clint shoves his hands further into his coat, hoping that somehow that will warm his fingers from the frozen state they’re in now. He regrets not grabbing gloves, or really anything more than the thin coat he snagged from the hooks by the front door. Too late now though.

He contemplates going back to the tower and just sitting through the arguments. He could just take out his hearing aids and go to the range, except last time he did that, Natasha came down and kicked his ass for avoiding the problem. Also for not telling her where he was going. At least she was there this time when he walked out.

It just doesn’t help when the arguments start to turn to the things Clint has done his best to forget. When they start to speculate about whether or not Bucky is _really_ free of Hydra’s control, or if he’s just waiting for them to let their guard down. The arguments always start after Bucky’s had a bad night, too. Clint can see it in his eyes every time Tony and Steve start to go at it, can see the way his eyes are dark, like someone’s drawn a curtain in his mind. It’s the same look Clint gets when he looks in the mirror in the darkest hours of the night.

Clint feels eyes on him, causing him to finally look around and take stock of just how far from the tower he’s gotten. Not too bad, only about twenty blocks. Tony or Sam can easily get to him if things go south. He does a quick sweep, making sure civilians aren’t too close and ducks into an alley. Now that he’s paying attention to more than the voices in his head, he catches a glimpse of someone moving along the rooftop.

And here he is with only the three knives he keeps in his pants. And the one in his boot and the darts up his sleeve. He feels underdressed. Really should’ve grabbed another coat.

Clint stops and pulls out his phone, trying to make it look as though he’s distracted, while giving him the added benefit of seeing just how many times Natasha and Sam have tried to contact him in the last forty-five minutes. (It’s seventeen calls and sixty-two text messages, for the record.) They’re going to be so upset when he gets home. Mostly because he will probably have another dozen bruises to add to his collection.

He starts to wonder if his sneaky little friend is just planning to sit around all day, which wouldn’t be too terrible. Having someone follow him who (probably) isn’t trying to kidnap and/or kill and/or terrorize him is a new feeling. Maybe he should check? See if they’re just a really creepy, very athletic fan? Natasha would kill him if he let someone trail him back to the tower.

He looks up, just to check if he can still see his friendly neighborhood parkour enthusiast, and he startles, falling flat on his ass because when the fuck did they get that _close_? And _shit_ is that--?

Bucky tilts his head slightly, looking down at Clint from his perch on the fire escape above him.

“Dude! What the fuck? I thought you were some crazy stalker!” Clint yells as he stands, brushing the dirt off his lightly bruised ass. “What are you even doing here?” he asks, now just sounding exasperated.

“Natalia was worried. She told me you were upset and that I should follow you.” Bucky is almost inhumanly graceful as he slips off the fire escape, dropping silently in front of Clint. “You weren’t supposed to see me, but you stopped for a while. I got worried.” Clint watches as Bucky glances down, and he finds himself trying to figure out if the pink on the soldier’s cheeks is from the cold or something else.

“I stopped because I noticed you,” he informs with a pointed look and a loose gesture to the roof where Bucky had been minutes ago before continuing, “It’s kind of my job to notice people following me on rooftops.” Clint looks back at his phone, and decides that if Natasha already sent Barnes after him, he doesn’t need to respond to her barrage of messages. It doesn’t matter. Maybe he can convince Bucky to do something with him. He never actually got coffee this morning. “You want to grab some coffee? I want coffee.” He turns, walking towards a coffee shop. He looks back when he reaches the mouth of the alley, and sees the Bucky hasn’t moved. “You coming?”

He seems to consider it for a moment. “Yeah. I’m coming.”

\---

“So next time she tells you to follow someone, try walking right next to them and having a conversation, yeah?” Clint sips his cappuccino as he tries to explain why following people on rooftops is a bad idea once again. Bucky just nods along, sipping his sugar with a side of coffee. (Clint has been repeatedly informed that it is a skinny white chocolate double shot mocha with raspberry syrup and extra whip, and it is one of the best things about this century. Whatever.)

“Why’d you run out?”

Clint’s steps falter for just a moment at Barnes’ question. He had almost forgotten about the argument he had walked out on, since he was having such a good time explaining modern manners to Bucky.

Clint considers his options. He could tell Bucky about the nightmares he still faces, about seeing the eyes of every agent he shot down, about not being able to make it through the night anymore, about how he feels the blue edging back in when Steve and Tony fight about Bucky’s brainwashing. Or he could make a stupid joke. Stupid joke it is.

“I realized I hadn’t seen a dog today. Decided to go see a dog instead of listening to them argue.” His stupid jokes are great, alright? “Made sense at the time,” Clint adds with a shrug, and dares to chance a glance up at Bucky, judging his reaction, trying to see if Bucky accepts the lie or if he’d try to push it, but Bucky is busy licking spilled whipped cream off his metal hand. (Clint bites back some kind of comment about that one because it’s too easy.)

They walk in silence for a few more blocks, when Clint starts to burrow further into his coat again. He knew it was going to be cold, but those clouds look like they’re going to let loose snow any minute now. They should probably start turning back towards the tower if he doesn’t want to get sick.

Clint starts to turn towards the tower, but a hand on his shoulder holds him back. He glances at Bucky, who is staring at his phone.

“Natalia says they’re still arguing. Want to show me around a little more? Stevie never lets me out on days like these.”

“Wait, did you sneak out to follow me?”

There’s a pause and something like a tense shuffle before Bucky’s eyes settle on something behind Clint. “Is that a park?” His brow furrows before he sends an inquiring look towards Clint. “Think there’ll be dogs there?” Bucky uses the hand that is still on Clint’s shoulder to direct him towards the park that towards the park.

\---

The lights in the hallway are what ends up waking him, rather than the clattering noises he should be hearing. He logically knows there’s no threat, JARVIS would have woken him up if there had been, but he grabs his bow and quiver from next to his bed anyway.

Clint spares a glance towards his nightstand, checking if his hearing aids are there, but he must have knocked them off the nightstand during one of his nightmares because they aren’t there. Odd. He normally doesn’t move during nightmares unless he feels completely safe. Well, safe besides the whole feeling like he’s not in control of his own mind thing. But that’s a problem for later, when there isn’t someone in his kitchen.

He creeps down the hallway, mentally accounting for the odd angles that he had Tony leave in the apartment. They make for great cover, but are terrible for sightlines. Hopefully the lights are just Natasha getting a snack? From his kitchen? At two o’clock in the morning? ...maybe she forgot to restock her own kitchen?

He peeks around the last corner and catches a flash of silver before ducking back behind the wall. That was definitely too much silver to be Natasha, and Pietro would have been in and out of there in seconds, probably not even needing a light. So either that’s Bucky, for some reason, or someone not so friendly.

He takes a deep breath, preparing himself. There’s always the chance that someone, somehow, got through the tower’s defenses. JARVIS should have caught them if it was an intruder, but Clint knows too well just how technology can fail.

He turns the corner, drawing back his bow. He must have made some sort of noise, because the person drops a metal container, doubtlessly causing a crash, which will wake Steve from his sleep a floor up. There’s a moment of tense silence, while Clint processes Bucky Barnes standing in his kitchen. It takes a few seconds longer than it really should because Clint is functioning on a very small ratio of hours asleep to hours awake.

“Bucky?” Clint can immediately tell his voice is too loud from the way Bucky shrinks into himself, turning so that his metal arm is out of view. “What’re you doing on my floor?”

In retrospect, Clint probably shouldn’t have asked any questions, because Bucky’s response is a mumbled mess that is impossible for Clint to make out. He holds up a hand so that Bucky stops and moves forward to the island situated between them.

“Just give me a second, I can’t hear anything you’re saying.” He taps the one corner of the counter he’s kept clean ever since Tony installed this feature. The counter lights up and displays a blinking cursor in the corner. “Okay, now talk. JARVIS will let me know what you’re saying.”

 _Why do you need JARVIS to tell you what I’m saying?_ lights up the counter for Clint to read.

“I’m deaf. And I knocked my aids off my nightstand at some point last night. Too dark to bother looking for them. What’re you doing on my floor?”

_Your floor? I thought this was Steve’s floor shit is this not Steve’s floor?_

“Steve’s one up.”

 _Shit._ Clint glances up, to see Bucky looking devastated. There was probably something deeper there, but it also didn’t look like that’s what he needs right now. Honestly, it just looks like he needs a good night’s sleep. But it’s not Clint’s job to decide what Bucky needs. Even if the poor man looks dead on his feet. And Clint knows how much easier it is to sleep with someone right there, watching your back.

Wait. Fuck. Bucky’s still talking. Clint looks down at the counter again, and is relieved to see that most of it is just cursing.

 _I thought this was Steve’s floor I was just looking for a place to sleep I’m so sorry I’ll leave now._ Clint manages to see the end of the sentence right as Bucky starts to leave the kitchen. If he lets Bucky leave now, he just knows that Bucky’s going to spend the rest of the night on the rooftop or in the gym or Steve’s floor; basically anywhere that isn’t his room two floors down. If Clint lets him leave now, there’s no way either of them will go back to sleep.

“Stay?” Shit. Clint didn’t want to say that. Clint’s stupid heart needed to stop telling his mouth to say things without his brain’s permission. But Bucky just looks so tired. And maybe Clint can help with that. He’d like if he could help with that.

_What?_

“It’s just- you were looking for a place to sleep right? Just… Just sleep on my couch. You don’t need to go anywhere. It’ll… Well it’ll help me sleep too.” He doesn’t want to look down and see what Bucky is saying in response, but that just leaves him staring at Bucky’s face, at his lips starting words, only to let them fall back into his throat. Bucky closes his mouth, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. Dear lord Clint must have sounded like an idiot.

Except that Bucky nods, and looks relieved just to have somewhere to just lie down for a while. Clint smiles, and turns to grab some blankets from the closets that Pepper made sure to have on every floor, but Bucky’s hand on his arm stops him before he can get too far down the hall.

 _Thank you_ spills across Bucky’s lips, a common enough phrase that Clint doesn’t have to take his eyes off of him. Clint looks down to the floor, like maybe the grain of the wood can tell him why, out of all the times he’s been thanked, this one time is making his heart skip a beat.

Clint shoots Bucky a smile, filing away the feeling for later.

\---

It’s been a solid hour of Clint staring out his door, watching the light flicker off Bucky’s arm every time he shifts in his sleep. An hour of Clint wondering whether it’d be easier to just give up on sleep tonight and go sit in the living room and watch trashy reality shows with the subtitles on. Not that the subtitles are consistent, they never are.

But Clint finds the experience oddly calming, watching the shifting of the light across the walls. It’s obvious that Bucky has his arm sprawled across his chest with the rhythmic way the light moves.

It leaves Clint wondering about the stupid things his heart was doing earlier. Wondering about why he can’t seem to do anything with Bucky without it shifting tempo at least once during the interaction. It’s not a fight or flight response: Clint learned to shut those down after the first time Natasha appeared in his tiny Bed Stuy apartment in the middle of the night. She didn’t need that kind of response, and he found the skill useful.

Clint just feels so comfortable around Bucky. It’s good knowing there’s someone else there who knows a little bit of how it feels to be clawing your way back from a time when you had no control, no choices. Bucky may not know what Clint went through, but it doesn’t matter to Clint’s subconscious. The strange tenseness that’s been sitting on Clint’s shoulders for months seemed to ease just a touch once he got to know Bucky a little better.

He contemplates the strange way in which Bucky has managed to slot himself into Clint’s life. It seemed that every time he wanted to go somewhere or do something, he found Bucky ready and willing to go along with whatever. Granted, there were those days when one of them didn’t want to go anywhere, didn’t even want to be around people, but Bucky seemed to understand that too. That was all Clint had ever risked asking for from the universe. He had gotten it with Natasha and was seemingly lucky enough to get it again with Bucky.

But he couldn’t be that lucky. Not with his track record.

With his track record, Bucky would find out about Clint’s burgeoning affections and would turn away from him, ripping the rug right out from under him. Or Bucky would find out that Clint would never be willing or wanting to take their relationship beyond dates and cuddling, beyond the simple physical aspect that Clint would always cling to during his previous relationships. Clint would be catching that look of disgust that he so often ran into when he tried to explain himself. Clint didn’t think that he could handle seeing that look on Bucky’s face.

So he resolved to keep quiet, to keep away.

It’s not like he was in love with him or anything.

\---

The lights flash. On. Off. Beat. On. Beat. Off.

It’s the code that he worked out with JARVIS for non-world-ending emergencies.

Shit.

He shoots out of bed, quickly grabbing his hearing aids from the small bowl Bucky gave him after the last time he knocked them off his nightstand.

“Jar? What’s up?” He glances towards the ceiling, a habit that’s really impossible to kick, as he moves to put on a shirt and grab his quiver. He considers putting on pants for a moment, but figures that everyone will forgive him for his purple boxers after everything is sorted.

“Sergeant Barnes is currently on the roof and in danger of falling, sir.” Clint knows that JARVIS is an AI, but swears he can still hear the concern behind his voice, and speeds up to a run towards the elevator. “Actually, sir, I’m more concerned that he may jump.” Clint’s heart stops, and he considers taking the stairs up, but the elevator is already opening and he knows that JARVIS will speed him to the top.

As he stands in the elevator, waiting for it to climb the ten floors between him and the roof, he thinks about what could have pushed Bucky to this point, and curses himself for not thinking of this possibility sooner. It’s been weeks of eyes shifting away from conversations and nightmares and pain. It’s been weeks of Bucky hiding away from Steve with Clint, or even sometimes alone, curled up against a window with an old Sci-Fi novel. Weeks of obvious pain and no one had the guts to connect the dots to the logical conclusion. At least, the logical conclusion for the person in pain.

The doors open, and Clint’s heart stops again. Because Bucky is unnaturally beautiful like this, standing above the city, staring out across the lights and traffic, wind whipping through his hair. And this isn’t the time to be falling for the man again, seeing as he’s precariously balanced above the skyline, holding onto the rail behind him with just his flesh hand, which can easily slip and send him spiraling below.

Bucky’s shoulders tense. He drops his head, looking at the drop before him before turning to look at Clint. There’s a flicker of surprise in his eyes. He must have been expecting someone other than Clint, someone who could actually help him if he fell. Jokes on him then, because Clint has half a dozen grappling arrows and he’s not afraid to use them.

Bucky turns back to the city. “It’s beautiful like this. So loud, but nothing really filtering through.” He leans forward, and Clint jerks forward, reaching out a hand like he can do anything at this distance. “I wonder what it feels like. It’d probably be easier like this.” Clint uses his momentum, moving forward until his hand is resting on Bucky’s metal one, splayed behind the man on the ledge, holding tight like he can keep anything from happening with his weak grip.

“Please, come back.” Clint’s voice is oddly strained, and it surprises him.

Bucky lets out a weak laugh, looking back to the sky. “That’s the thing isn’t it? Everyone wants me to come back, but I never really left. The person I was, the guy Stevie knew, _that_ guy just got shoved to the back, and how is that different from anyone else?”

“Because you didn’t choose to shove that part of you away. Everyone else gets the choice.”

“But I still _let it happen_. I still let them scrape out every damn piece of me and fill it with what they wanted. And now that’s all I really am. I got away, yeah, but I’m still everything they made me.” Clint squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, pulling himself back from his own ledge, knowing that right here, right now is about Bucky. “All I am is a weapon. All I ever was was a weapon. I’m tired of being that. I just want to feel something again.”

When Bucky turns back to Clint, his face is more open than the archer has ever seen it. All the pain and loneliness is written plainly across his face, pooling in his eyes, spilling across his cheekbones, and flooding his lips. All the pain he’s felt since coming back, all the pain of fighting so hard for so long, is right there. And Clint knows exactly what he’s feeling.

“Look, I know- Lord, do I know- what it’s like to stare into the mirror and only see a weapon.” God, he never wanted to admit this to anyone, but he just keeps going. “To see every person you’ve ever hurt or killed. To know that, when you did these things, that was all you wanted. You _wanted_ to be that weapon. You _wanted_ to serve those monsters. Because that’s what they wrote into the blank slate that they made your mind. They wrote that you were a killer, their perfect tin soldier. But they had to keep rewriting that lie because there was still that bit of you that wouldn’t accept it. That small bit of you that was titanium. That their tools could never cut into, could never even scratch. That’s the bit of you that you need to hold onto right now. It doesn’t matter how you hold onto it, but you need to hold onto it with everything you have left or else you’re never going to be able to step back from this ledge, never going to be able to just move _on_ with your life. Can you do that?”

Clint’s crying, holding onto Bucky’s cold arm with everything he has, determined that if the man goes over, Clint’s going with him. “I know it’s hard right now. It feels like everything inside of you is just shattered, and there’s no way you’ll be able to piece yourself back together enough to feel anything. But I promise you, if you try, you will find that piece of you that never broke. And then they can never do that to you again, because you’ll have that bit they can never even scratch.”

Bucky looks back out over the city. Like he’s looking for something. Clint hopes whatever it is means he’s been listening to Clint ramble. He looks back at Clint, and turns his arm so that he can grip Clint’s in return. He swings himself back over the railing, landing so that he’s standing chest to chest with Clint, arms crossing between them, Clint’s bow awkwardly knocking against his thigh where it dangles from his other hand.

They stare at each other, Bucky searching Clint’s tear streaked face, and Clint just trying to reassure himself that Bucky’s still there in front of him. He resists the urge to throw his arms around Bucky, to dig his nose into the man’s collarbone and feel his heart beating against his own. There’s no way for him to resist drinking him in, though. Bucky’s hair is still wind whipped, and is caught in a mass of tangles on one side of his face. Clint has never seen him so beautiful, and he sees the loneliness slip, just a touch, like whatever he found on Clint’s face was reassuring.

Clint shivers, a harsh reminder that he’s standing on the roof of one of Manhattan’s tallest buildings in his boxers. His very thin, very purple boxers.

“Let’s go inside, you’re freezing.” Bucky’s voice is small where it breaks the silence, trembling with the adrenaline rush that’s slowly fleeing his system.

“Only if you make me coffee. And none of that sugary shit.” Clint sighs internally; leave it up to him to take an emotionally charged moment with someone he totally isn’t in love with and somehow fuck it up with a joke.

Bucky huffs out a laugh, rolling his eyes, and Clint fucked up. Clint fucked up so hard, why isn’t Bucky pulling away and finding someone with better emotion-handling skills or something.

“I promise I won’t add things to your coffee to make it taste _good,_ but don’t come crawling to me when your taste buds die _._ ” Bucky pulls on Clint’s arm, leading him back towards the elevator, which is already open and waiting for them. Clint’s going to have to get JARVIS something. What do you even get as a gift for a computer? A mouse?

Later, when Bucky looks at him over his third cup of coffee, Clint thinks he sees the edge of something in his eyes. Something that echoes what’s been sitting in Clint’s chest for weeks now.

It’s probably just his imagination.

\---

He’s making dinner when Bucky decides to drop in, quite literally. Clint’s about to add just a touch of his own blend of spice to a recipe he picked up on a long term mission in Thailand, when Bucky drops from the ceiling and taps him on the shoulder, startling the shaker out of his hand and into the pot.

“Aww spices, no.” Clint looks mournfully down at his soup, knowing already there’s no way to save it. There’s not really a way to _remove_ spice from a recipe. He glances over his shoulder to see Bucky’s confused face, which Tony should really work on weaponizing, it’s almost as good as Steve’s puppy dog eyes. “I dropped my spice shaker in the pot, now the soup’s ruined.” Clint gropes around on the counter for his hearing aids, holding up a finger to Bucky until he gets them over his ears.

“Sorry about that. Is there anything you can do?”

“Naw. Spices are like chemicals, once you put them in, there’s not really a way to un-put-them-in.” Clint picks up the pot and moves to pour it into the sink. “Want to help me remake this? I’m gonna have to use a different spice blend though.”

Bucky nods, and dutifully follows Clint as he remakes his Tom Yum. He’s not sure whether Bucky actually knows what he’s making, but he manages to follow Clint’s instructions to the letter. Once Clint’s dished out the soup and they’ve sat down, Bucky takes a huge spoonful of the soup and slurps it up before Clint can think to warn him about the heat.

“Oh shit.” Clint watches as Bucky’s face slowly reddens, eyes beginning to water, and considers fleeing to the nearest available air vent for safety. Instead he just watches as Bucky sits there, hand white-knuckled around the spoon, until he realizes that the man isn’t about to do anything to help himself. Clint mentally runs through remedies for dealing with spice, and he shoots up to get Bucky a glass of milk.

When he returns, Bucky is still gripping his spoon inches from his face. Clint gently pulls the spoon away from his face, making room for the glass. He reaches for Bucky’s other hand, but realizes that the metal hand is clenched so hard that it’s making an ominous creaking noise. Instead he reaches for the flesh hand, gently prying it from the spoon, and leads it to the reinforced glass. He steps back and allows Bucky to choose when to take a drink, and once he does, breathes a sigh of relief.

“The fuck did you put in that soup?” The glare Bucky levels at him should really be scary, but Clint is overly focused on the bright color high on his cheeks, and the shine in his eyes. Wait. Shit. He was talking again, and Clint was zoning out with intent to ogle. He just needs to respond to the last thing Bucky said.

“I used my homemade blend? You were there when I put it in.”

“Okay, so what’s in that. Because I’m pretty sure you just tried to kill me.” Aw shit. Maybe if Clint mumbles, Bucky won’t be able to blame him for his pain.

Mumbling does not work.

“What are ghost peppers?” Clint glances down, like maybe if Bucky can’t catch his eye he won’t have to answer the question. “JARVIS, what are ghost peppers?” While Clint is infinitely proud that Bucky is comfortable asking JARVIS questions now, he really wishes the AI wasn’t so omnipresent.

JARVIS obliges to answer: “Ghost peppers, also known as the Bhut Jolokia, was once considered the hottest chili pepper in the world. It is now ranked as somewhere between the third and the seventh hottest pepper in the world, depending on the news site. It was the first pepper to scientifically test over 1 million scovilles, the rating system for-“

Clint cuts off the computer before it can continue to incriminate him, “Thanks, J. I think he gets the idea.” He looks up again to see Bucky’s murder glare leveled squarely at his head. “I forgot that you might not have had Tom Yum before, so I just kind of let it happen?” Oh, he’s dead. Give Natasha his best, the bow goes to Kate, Bucky gets nothing because he is the murderer.

Bucky’s face gradually begins to shift though, as if he’s thinking something through and the look it finally settles on is purely mischievous. “You know what’d be great? Giving some of this to Stevie. He’s never had it, right?”

Clint just nods, trying to figure out just when Bucky gained this streak of evil. He sits back and watches as Bucky tells JARVIS to inform Steve that there’s food in the communal kitchen if he wanted any.

“Wait, are you going to warn him about the heat?”

“Fuck no. He’s been a little shit lately. He deserves this.” Bucky grabs Clint’s hand and drags him around the corner, hiding just as Steve enters the kitchen.

Bucky pushes Clint against the wall, pressing into him as Steve comes closer. Clint’s heart starts pounding so hard he swears he can see his chest move with it, and he takes momentary stock to ensure that the adrenaline is from Bucky’s ridiculous prank and not from a looming panic attack. Their breath mingles, and Clint tries not to stare at the soldier’s unfairly pink lips.

Bucky catches his eye, and for a moment, Clint swears he can see something there, the same thing he saw a few nights ago on the roof, the thing that makes his pounding heart leap from its rightful place in his chest straight to his throat. He can’t be imagining the space between them shrinking, can he?

“WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK! BUCKY, YOU LITTLE SHIT, WHERE ARE YOU?” Steve’s shouts break the moment. Bucky sniggers as he pulls Clint to the elevator, letting the doors shut on Steve’s bright red face rounding the corner.

They devolve into giggles as soon as they get onto Clint’s floor, Steve safely trapped three floors down.

“Jarvis, you’ve gotta’ve gotten a picture of his face. Please tell me you got a picture of his face?” Clint gasps out between laughs. JARVIS kindly displays a picture of Steve in all his glory, face bright red and eyes watering, diving for the sink. This sets off another round of laughter, causing the two of them to collapse onto the couch. “Man, I haven’t laughed that hard since Bobbi and I were together.”

Bucky stopped laughing. Shit. Bringing up an ex was probably the best mood killer. Especially when Clint’s heart kept doing that weird jump-skip thing it’s doing now.

“Bobbi?”

“My ex. We dated, we broke up, no big deal. It just happened to be that we broke up right before New York happened.” Right before he was going to propose. But that was years ago. He’s fine now. He was totally only heartbroken for like a year afterwards.

“Is it okay if I ask why? I can’t really see someone breaking up with you.” Clint wonders if Bucky knows how that sounds. It’s probably just something people used to say to each other. Yeah. Completely just outdated courtesy worming its way into Clint’s brain.

Clint goes to open his mouth but ends up cut off by the Avenger’s specific alarm blaring loud enough that Clint can feel it in his bones. He lets out a groan no one can hear and hauls himself off the couch. When he looks at Bucky, the man looks startled, hand on the knife at the small of his back that Clint isn’t supposed to know about.

“There’s an emergency. We can finish this conversation when I get back.” Clint turns and runs to assemble, trusting Bucky to stay where he is.

\---

Clint comes to in a drug induced haze, ears aching where his hearing aids still sit, skin itching against the hospital sheets. He listens to the beeping of the machines, taking stock of where the rough feel of sheets is replaced with the rough feel of bandages. It’s a significant amount of his body.

Natasha’s going to kill him.

He lets himself settle again. Drifts. Knows that he’s safe. Tries to piece together what happened this time: there were robots, he’s sure of that. (And why is it always robots nowadays? Like, the super racist, homophobic organization that is HYDRA couldn’t recruit anyone? Big surprise.) And he remembers that he had managed to find a perch that let him see all his earthbound teammates. Pietro ran into the line of fire (again) and Clint saved his ass (again). Natasha was covering Steve, back to back and perfectly in sync, her firing the occasional round off his shield. Wanda had called out a warning about something wrong with the robots and-

Oh _shit_.

Natasha won’t get the chance to kill him, Wanda will get to him first.

No. Wait. Wanda is going to kill him, and then magic him back somehow, just so Natasha can kill him again.

He takes in his stupidity for a moment. He let himself get caught in an explosion caused by one of his EMP arrows interacting with a robot that had been primed to explode in response to an electromagnetic pulse.

...which was what Wanda had been trying to tell him.

He hears someone opening the door and slows his breathing, not ready to deal with the fallout from his injuries. There’s a sigh before the doors close again, and footsteps echo across the room. The person falls heavily into a chair at Clint’s side, and the heavy weight of a head rests on the bed next to Clint’s bandaged arm.

He’s contemplating opening his eyes or moving his hand or at least doing something that will show he’s awake, but before he can, a deep voice interrupts his thoughts.

“You’re ridiculous, you know that?” It’s Bucky. Of course it’s Bucky and now all Clint can think about is the conversation they never finished before the mission. About how he was this close to telling Bucky about himself.

“I finally get you to sit down and start talking ‘bout feelings and you fuckin’ go and get blown up on me. That’s a hell of a way to tell a fella you don’t wanna talk.” Clint wants nothing more than to move, to lay his hand on Bucky’s head and comfort the man, but he quickly finds that the drugs he’s on are making his limbs feel heavier than Mjolnir.

“You’re an idiot. But I think I might be an even bigger one. Y’know Stevie won’t let me on the roof anymore? All ‘cause that stupid AI told my fuckin’ SHIELD assigned therapist about what happened a few weeks back. An’ my therapist _strongly recommended_ that he keep me away from heights. Like I couldn’tah survived that shit.”

Clint is going to punch Steve. Just as soon as his arms start working again. And after he gets a boxing glove or something, he’s not stupid enough to break his hand on supersoldier jaw.

Shit. He’s talking again, and it sounds emotional, and Clint’s been thinking about punching his best friend.

“-ve been tryin’ to get me to do this thing where I tell them what I want. So, I’ve been tryin’ to figure out exactly what it is that _I_ want. Not what Hydra wanted, or what Stevie wants, or even what Natalia or what you want outta me. And I ended up figuring out three things. First off, I want Stevie to finally figure out, and finally _understand_ that, while I might remember who I was when I was with him, when I was Bucky, I’m never gonna be Bucky again. I haven’t been Bucky for 70 years, and he’s not fuckin’ comin’ back. Secondly, I want to be able to feel the wind in my hair and climb up to the top of the tower again. That sounds stupid, but they never used to let me feel that. Never got to feel the breeze on my face, or the sun on my skin. It was always do this, do that. Stay quiet. Stay sane. Don’t scare people. You don’t realize how much you miss the sun when you can’t remember the sun as anything other than an enemy.”

Clint feels Bucky move to cling to his hand.

“And finally. This one is the real kicker. And kinda why I waited ‘til you were unconscious to talk this through anywhere. Never know when you’re about to pop out of an air vent like it’s nobody’s damn business. I want this almost as much as I want the wind in my hair or to be my own person, and it’s about as important as that shit. God, Clint, I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you more than anything. I want to hold you, and show you just how much you mean to mean. Just how much having you around makes my life instantly better. Makes everything just a bit brighter. Having you around is a lot like having the sun on my face and the wind in my hair. It kinda makes me want to run and hide, but it also kinda makes me want to run out into a field of flowers and frolic like a goddamn idiot. But you aren’t like the other half of my soul or some shit because I’m not incomplete. I know that. There’s no way that an idiot like you are some sort of magic other half that’s gonna make all my dreams come true. But you are a goddamn important part of my life. You’re the part of my life that makes it worth getting up in the mornin’. The part that makes the terrible days bearable, and the bad days good, the good days great, and the few and far between great days fuckin’ unforgettable. You are the part of my life that I want to hold onto with everything I got. You are the part that’s written into that stupid titanium core you were on about. So please, god, please Clint, come back to me, so that I can hold onto you with everything I got left.”

Clint honestly has no clue how long he’s been out, or how long Bucky’s been talking. But he knows that he’s got to show Bucky he’s awake somehow. Maybe if he could-

But no, what happens when Bucky finds out? What happens when he realizes that Clint can’t give him everything he needs, when he realizes Clint’s never going to be good enough for him? What happens when, despite how much everything in Clint yearns to return the man’s love, to give the man everything he’s hid within himself, Bucky realizes that Clint can’t give that penultimate thing, that thing that’s driven away everyone else. The thing that’s left Clint alone all these years.

What happens when Bucky finds out that Clint will never have sex with him?

\---

Clint’s totally not avoiding Bucky. He’s in the air vents because they’re comfortable, not because the vents would make it extremely difficult for Bucky to get around without making noise. Totally not the reason.

Okay. He’s avoiding him a little.

But it’s completely understandable, considering that the man confessed his affections to Clint while he thought he was unconscious. It’s not like Clint doesn’t return the affections he just…

He just doesn’t want to see that look in Bucky’s eye.

Clint burrows into the nest he’s created in the vents, pulling his purple fleece blanket just a little further over his head. He’s got pretty much everything he needs up here. He just has to leave twice a day to use the restroom. And maybe catch a shower. He’s starting to smell a little.

His calm is broken by Natasha’s voice echoing through the vents. “Clint. Get your ass down here. We have a meeting.”

“I can attend the meeting just fine from here. I’ll just be in the vents over the meeting room.”

“Clint. If you don’t get out of the vents right now, I will send Steve in after you.”

“Ha. Your boyfriend could never fit his shoulders through to get in here.”

“Well Barnes is out, so if you don’t get out of those vents now, I will have Steve pull the vents from the ceiling and no one will stop him.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

Aww, Nat. Clint extracts himself from his pile of things and starts making his way towards the usual meeting room. He peeks into the room, making sure that Bucky isn’t in there before popping out the vent and landing in the meeting room.

“Alright, Jarvis. Turn on the field.” Wait, what field is Steve talking about? They don’t have fields.

Clint has a split second warning of a blur in the corner of his eye before he finds himself tied to a chair, watching the rest of the team walk out.

“What the fuck is going on? Why am I tied up? Guys?” Steve just shoots him a wink before shoving Bucky (who Clint was promised wasn’t around) into the room. “What was that? Why did you just wink at me?” He doesn’t mention Natasha lying to him, because admitting that she managed to threaten him out of the vents is just sad.

Bucky takes in Clint being tied to a chair for a moment, taking the time to process the situation fully, before he starts to giggle.

Bucky Barnes is giggling and Clint’s brain has stopped functioning because it’s so dang cute.

“Are you just going to stand there or are you going to let me out?” Clint tugs on his restraints to emphasize his point.

“I dunno. I’m kinda enjoying this.” Bucky pulls up a chair, settling in. “Also, I haven’t seen you in a couple days, and I was gettin’ worried. You’ll just run if I let you go.”

“Actually, Sergeant Barnes, Mister Stark installed a system of ‘force fields’ in the ventilation systems. Agent Barton cannot leave this room except through the door.”

Clint is going to kill Stark. “Want to tell me why this is happening, J?”

“Mister Stark said that you and Sergeant Barnes were, quote, ‘too mopey and sad’, and your fellow Avengers created what I believe is called a ‘scheme’.”

“Well. I can’t imagine why they would think that. What with you hiding out in the vents and not attending check-ups the entire week after you wake up from a _coma._ ” Bucky may or may not have a point. But Clint _needed_ to live in the vents for a week because… reasons. Good reasons. Great reasons even.

Clint’s still focused on getting out, and his best bet is still Bucky, so he pulls out the puppy dog eyes he stole from Lucky. The puppy dog eyes even work on Steve. Sometimes.

Bucky rolls his eyes and stands, walking around Clint’s chair to cut him free. Clint internally cheers at the effectiveness of his puppy eyes. Lucky is getting an extra slice of pizza once Katie brings him back from California.

Bucky sits back down in front of Clint and leans his flesh arm on the table next to him. “So you want to tell me why you’ve been living in the vents for the last week?”

“Not particularly.” Clint shoots him a flimsy grin, before standing and opening the door. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

Clint turns and walks straight into the wall of muscles that is Steve. He stands there for a moment, trying to figure out where the super soldier came from. He pats the pecs a couple times, trying to process.

Steve turns him around and very gently herds Clint back into the room. “Stay in there until you work things out.” He shoots Bucky a smile and closes the door.

Clint stands there, dazed. “What the- What just happened? Why did Cap just wall-of-flesh me?” He plops down into the same chair he was tied to moments before. “What is going on with those two?”

“Hell if I know.” Bucky shifts in his chair, twisting his hands together and inspecting his fingers as if they could give him the answers hidden in the back of his head. “Maybe it’s the same thing that’s going on with you.”

 _Shit._ This is the start to the exact conversation Clint’s been avoiding. He eyes the vents, but he knows that whatever field Tony had put on them would hurt if he tried to climb through it.

“You gonna sit or are you gonna stand there like an idiot while you explain?” Bucky kicks out another one of the chairs surrounding the table and nods towards it.

Clint stands there for a moment, trying to see if there’s any way out of this conversation, but the only real option would be to jump through the window, and he stupidly trusted Natasha enough to not bring his quiver.

He’s never trusting Natasha again.

He rolls his eyes and drops into the offered chair, deciding that he’s just going to wait it out until Bucky decides to leave. Clint’s a sniper, he can sit around for hours if he needs to. And ever since Bucky realized that he didn’t need permission to do things, he can’t sit still for more than half an hour.

So Clint waits.

And waits.

And waits.

He stares at his cuticles while he waits for Barnes to break. He really should let Kate drag him to the nail salon again. She likes it when he goes along and it makes it so that he doesn’t bleed all over his arrows because he picked at his cuticle when he got bored.

Clint risks looking away to check the time, but gets caught in Bucky’s stare when his eyes track across his face. The stare isn’t entirely Winter Soldier, but the concentration and chill are still disconcerting. It makes Clint shift in his seat. The look is one that makes it clear that, however long Clint may be able to wait, Bucky will always be able to wait just a minute longer.

Fuck. This means that Clint is going to have to say something or have to continue to sit under that glare.

_Fuck._

Okay. He can do this. He just has to start by figuring out how much Bucky knows about everything.

He can do this.

He’s a S.H.I.E.L.D agent.

He can’t do this.

But he has to say something, so he lets slip the first thing that comes to mind. “Okay, what the fuck is this all about?”

And finally, _finally,_ Bucky moves, shifting forwards to rest his elbows on his knees. The stare doesn’t drop, but at least he’s _moving._

“You’ve been avoidin’ me. You’ve been avoidin’ me to the point where you broke out of medical before you were even healed.” Bucky’s voice is pure ice. Clint’s not sure how much of it he can take. He needs to lie his way out of this quickly.

“I always duck out of medical early.” That isn’t a lie. “I haven’t been avoiding you.” Lie. “I’ve been avoiding _Steve_ because he’ll drag my ass back to medical.” True.

Clint is staring at is cuticles again, overly interested in the hangnail on his right pinkie finger. He knows it’ll hurt if he tugs on it, but he’s having trouble resisting.

“Clint.”

It’ll only bleed for a minute tops.

“Clint.”

And then it’ll be over and he can go.

“ _Clint._ Look at me. Please.” Bucky’s let the ice melt from his voice, has moved so that he’s right _there,_ right within range of Clint’s arm. All he has to do is reach out and-

No.

“ _Clint. Please.”_ Shit.

Shit.

_Shit._

He can’t do this. He can’t sit here and listen to Bucky’s voice crack and break and fall to pieces all for him.

He looks up.

Bucky’s face lights up, the panicked edges fading out, and Clint’s caught in his too-dark-brown eyes again.

“Please tell me what’s wrong.” There’s hope there, hidden in the depths of Bucky’s eyes. Hope that Clint hasn’t seen in his own in a long time.

He can’t do this anymore. He squeezes his eyes shut, and let’s go of his walls.

“I heard you.”

“What? You heard me doin’ what?”

“I heard your whole speech when you thought I was unconscious but I really was just drugged to my fucking gills and couldn’t move to let you know I could hear everything and ohmygodpleasedon’thateme.”

Clint keeps his eyes firmly shut, hoping that was going to be the end of it.

“Oh.”

_Oh?_

“I- I didn’t really mean for you to hear that.”

“Maybe you should’ve said it somewhere other than right fucking next to me.” Clint’s totally not crying. Totally not. There’s just something in his eye.

“Yeah, I’ll admit that that was fuckin’ stupid. Can you really blame me for thinkin’ you wouldn’t hear? You’d just been blown up!” Bucky lets out a sigh, and his voice shifts in position, coming closer. “I was worried about you, y’know. You’ve gotten real important to me.”

Clint shakes his head. He’s got to get away from this conversation, cut it off before it starts hurting.

“Oh, come on, you don’t believe me? Look at me. I’m on my knees in front of you. I bribed Stevie and Natalia to get you out of the vents just to _talk_ to you. I fucked up and admitted everythin’ I was feeling while you were conscious. I am _so_ far gone on you, Clint.”

Clint has to stop this. Has to stop it before it starts.

“No. You aren’t. You can’t be. You’re wrong.”

Bucky huffs out a laugh in disbelief.

“How can you, of all people, try to convince me that what I’m feelin’ is wrong?”

“Because you can’t care about me like that. You’ll just leave.”

Bucky’s flesh hand reaches out and rests against Clint’s cheek, thumb stroking small circles into his skin.

“What makes you think I could ever leave you?”

“Because everyone always does.” His thumb stills.

“Is this about Bobbi?”

Head shake.

“Is it about why she left?”

Head nod.

“Why d’you think it’ll make me leave?”

This is it. This is his opportunity to tell Bucky everything. But he can’t do it. He just can’t. So he shakes his head, and pulls out of Bucky’s grip.

Or at least, he tries to.

“Clint. Please, please don’t run from this. You’re probably thinking somethin’ along the lines of, ‘he’s going to leave anyways, so I might as well leave first’ and- and that leaving first will hurt so much less.” Why does Bucky have to be right so damn often? “There is nothing that could make me leave you except you asking me to leave. If you ask me to leave, I will get up and walk out that door ‘cause I just want you to be happy. And if me leaving will make you happy, then I will leave. You just have to say it.”

But he can’t. Clint can’t say it. He can’t get the words out from behind the block in his throat. He tries to force them past, but what comes out is the one thing he was trying to avoid saying.

“You’re gonna leave because I’m asexual.”

“Asexual?” It always turns into a vocab lesson, doesn’t it?

“I- I don’t feel sexual attraction. And- personally- I don’t ever want to have sex.”

And there it is. Out in the open.

And Bucky starts to laugh.

It’s not a big laugh or a harsh laugh. It’s one of those small laughs that catches in the back of the throat, the ones you let out when times are tough and suddenly there’s a light.

It’s a gentle laugh.

“You thought I would leave because of that? Clint, those things don’t matter to me. I care about _you._ ”

“But, literally everyone I’ve ever told about this has left. This is _why Bobbi left me._ ”

“Then she was a fuckin’ idiot. Because _this_? This is not a problem. And anyone who says it is? They’re fucking wrong, okay?”

Clint finally opens his eyes, and Bucky’s right _there._ Right there, and so very real, and looking at him like he hung the stars in the sky.

Clint’s sure he’s looking like that right back.

“So, uh.” Bucky rubs the back of his neck with his metal hand, and it’s so endearing that Clint almost has to hide his face again. “Quick question.” Here it comes, Clint’s been waiting for it. He was so supportive and now something’s going to break down. “Is it alright if I kiss you?”

It’s such a ridiculous question that Clint lets out a little laugh and reaches out a hand to grab ahold of Bucky’s stupid red Henley and drag him in.

“Only if I get to kiss you right after.”

\---

“Hey! Archer boy!”

“Ah yes. I love it when my boyfriend calls me ‘archer boy’. It shows so much affection, and I never want to punch him in the face afterwards.”

“Shut up and c’mere.”

Clint groans, and hauls himself off the couch and into the kitchen. Bucky is trying (and failing) to recreate the Tom Yum they made a month or two back, Clint’s still a little sketchy on the whole time thing. Happens when you’re in a coma for three-ish weeks.

“Whaddaya want?” Clint makes a valiant effort to imitate Bucky’s Brooklyn drawl, but judging from the look on the man’s face, he fails.

Bucky drops his patented ‘judgement eyes’ for a smirk, and pulls on Clint’s waist, nestling the archer into his chest and tucking his chin on Clint’s head. Which is totally unfair because they’re the same height. No matter what Tony says. Tony doesn’t even know anything about height he’s like 5’-

Oh. Wait. Those are definitely Bucky’s lips on his forehead and he should probably be paying attention to his boyfriend. (God, he’ll never get used to the sound of that, even in his own head.)

“I got ya something.” Bucky pulls one of his arms away, making Clint whimper at the loss of heat. It’s back soon enough, but it’s still not wrapped totally around his back. “So I was talkin’ to Stark, and I got him to make me these.”

Bucky slips the thing in his hand over Clint’s head, and the cold chain settles against his neck. Clint looks down to find a pair of dog tags resting against his chest. His breath catches as he reads the imprints on the metal.

JAMES BARNES

THERE’S A PART OF

YOU THAT NEVER BROKE

“Shit.” Clint sees the message on the other tag is different, and has to stop himself from tearing up when he reads:

CLINT BARTON

YOU ARE WRITTEN

INTO MY CORE

“They’re made of titanium. Tony asked me what I wanted written on it, and I was real happy I remembered that shit you said on the rooftop.” Clint can’t stop messing with the tags, marveling at the strength he can feel in the tags. It’s almost the feeling he gets when lays his hand on Bucky’s metal arm, the same hidden strength beneath a metallic glean. “Can I kiss you?”

Clint finally tears his eyes away from the tags, just to see Bucky staring down at him. All he can really do is nod, allowing Bucky to lean down and catch Clint’s lips with his own.

Clint pulls back for a moment, stopping Bucky before he can get too into it.

“You remember that old wives’ tale about dog tags?” Bucky’s confusion gives Clint all the answers he needs. “Alright. So there’s this thing that an old army wife friend of Sam’s did to bring her husband home safe. Not sure if it’s an army thing or a her thing, but before her husband shipped out, he gave her a duplicate set of dog tags to the ones he was wearing, and the whole time he was gone, she couldn’t bring herself to take them off. Like if she took them off, that meant her husband was never coming home. Sure enough, he came back.”

“Do you think that actually works?”

“Why don’t you get Stark to make you another set of these and find out?”

Bucky’s laughter resonates in Clint’s chest as he pulls him close again, lips sliding against his forehead.

It’s not perfect. There’s still nights where one or both of them wake up screaming. There’s still days where Clint becomes thoroughly convinced that Bucky’s going to leave him. But he’s safe, and, wrapped up in Bucky’s arms, Clint feels like he’s finally home.

**Author's Note:**

> For the Winterhawk Exchange. This thing got way out of my control and is longer than I really meant it to be.


End file.
